This invention relates generally to electrical contacts, and in particular to an electrical contact having spring-biased tabs for mounting to a circuit board.
There are many conventional methods of mounting electronic components to printed circuit boards. It is typical to stuff a raw circuit board with components by so-called z-axis insertion and allow gravity to keep the components in place until they can be passed through a wave-soldering machine and soldered in. Sometimes the nature of the component (or the process) requires that the component be secured in some manner prior to the soldering process, for example, by bending or crimping leads or gluing; however, these techniques require an extra step in the process. Some components, such as connectors or electrical contacts, may be forced into a hole in a circuit board and held in place by friction until they can be soldered; however, in most cases a portion of the component protrudes from the board and requires clipping, which is yet another step. Finally, it is sometimes difficult to get a good solder fillet when leads extend through the board and protrude, leading to cold solder joints or poor mechanical connection.
It would be desirable to provide a component, such as an electrical contact, that could be mounted to a circuit board in such a way that allows z-axis insertion, that secures itself to the board without additional mechanical fasteners, that does not protrude an appreciable amount through the board, that provides a bridge for solder, that can be used on a single or multilayer circuit boards, and reduces the number of manufacturing assembly steps.